Page 92 of Nowhere to Hide
I already know what he’s talking about. I’ve known since they went into the kitchen and since the birthmark comment at practice. I just didn’t want to ask Sloane or Mason, because I didn’t want the answers to that question.
What happened in the kitchen?
I pushed him tonight, in front of the room, and I have no idea what I just set in motion. And as the guilt overwhelms me, my thoughts drift back to Sloane, her hand against the glass over mine twenty minutes ago, turning away on the verge of tears.
I was trying to be the good boyfriend, the patient one, the one who promised I wouldn’t try to fix everything for her all the time. When the whole time, it felt like she was pulling away from me and back toward the guy who treated her like shit.
And it feels like the hand against the glass and the tears were a goodbye.
Or an admission.
Or maybe I’m doing it again — taking the worst thing I can imagine and deciding it’s true, because at least the worst thing would explain the week — so I pick up my phone and I type a message.
Rowan: I miss you. Come over tonight?
I send it before I can think about it, because if I think about it, I’ll rewrite it four times and send something careful instead, and I am so fucking tired of careful. I want to resolve this, even if the fix involves detonating my whole life and my whole team.
The three dots appear. Then disappear. Then come back.
The reply arrives.
Sloane: Tough game. I’m proud of you. But I’m exhausted and have an early class.
It’s kind. It’s polite. And it’s exactly the confirmation I was dreading.
I needed her to sayyes, I’m coming over, leave the door unlockedorI’m worried about youorsomething is wrong and I need to tell you what it is.I need her to be the girl who usedto send four texts in the time it took me to read one, but I don’t know how to ask for that.
And I don’t want her to perform if I’m not the guy she wants.
I lace my hands behind my neck and close my eyes and breathe. I should leave — go home, eat something, sleep — but instead, I sit here, trying not to think, which has never been something I’m good at.
And when I open my eyes, I catch my reflection in one of the mirrors.
It’s a guy still in full gear, the C on his chest.
I look at him for a long time, but I don’t recognize him.
act 3
twenty-five
SLOANE
The phone buzzes twice— two texts, one after another — then stops.
I know it’s Rowan because that’s his pattern. Two texts, then nothing for twenty minutes while he paces the room and thinks, then another text once he gives in to his impatience and texts again.
I’ve watched him do it and laughed at him for it, but now the buzzing is happening against the wood of my nightstand, and I can’t make myself reach for the phone. Because, right now, I don’t have anything to say back.
The room is dim and the blinds are half-drawn, letting in a stripe of gray morning light that falls across the foot of the bed and makes a pale rectangle on the floor. Ivy’s bed is already made, which means she got up early and is planning something.
Ivy only rises before noon for class or conspiracies.
I pull the hoodie tighter around my shoulders. It’s Rowan’s, a navy one with the fraying cuff on the left sleeve, and I stole it three weeks ago from the back of his desk chair because I was cold and he was in the shower and it smelled like him.
Now it just makes me miss him — and us — from before all this shit.
More texts make my phone buzz, and I press my face into the pillow and don’t let myself think about his kitchen. If I do, I have to think about theotherkitchen, the one at Ironwood House, and what Mason knows.
